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Struggling FAMU posts budget surplus for year

TALLAHASSEE - After struggling through budget shortfalls and accounting bungles, Florida A&M University finished this past year with a surplus, and interim president Castell Bryant said Friday she hopes the improvement will continue.

FAMU had an $8-million surplus left over from its $397.5-million budget for fiscal year 2004-05, completed June 30, an audit by KPMG showed.

"You have so many other challenges you don't have time to celebrate right at that moment," Bryant said. "You have to get back to being focused on the big picture and that's where we are."

The school showed a $3-million deficit in 2003-04 and was $6-million down the year before.

"When I accepted this job, I knew we had problems," Bryant said. "It was really important we got a handle on our finances."

There was plenty to fix. Bills were delinquent, some administrators were paid late because of accounting errors, and the football coach was told to stay home last fall because there wasn't enough money to recruit players.

Bryant, who took over the interim presidency in January, slapped a spending moratorium on cell phones and travel after a private audit of school finances identified $23-million in discrepancies. She hired a new provost.

Bryant also fired a law school dean, the football coach and two absentee professors, and let other employees go to cut costs.

"We put in a lot of measures that helped us get to this point," Bryant said.

But will the school, struggling with decreased enrollment, be able to get back to normal?

"You just can't have it the way it used to be," she said. "Next week we've got to sit down and start all over again."

Meanwhile, university trustees named a committee to begin seeking a permanent president.

"I made a commitment at the beginning of my tenure to end in the black," Bryant said Friday. "So it's a relief in the sense that I fulfilled a commitment."

[Last modified October 8, 2005, 01:25:11]